


Water

by dannihowell (iguessicantry)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Water (2005)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Arranged Marriage, Keeping corner, M/M, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 08:31:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7632649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessicantry/pseuds/dannihowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan loses his husband at the age of seven. Another man doesn’t enter his life for ten years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water

_Age Seven_

“Do you remember getting married?” his mother asked. Daniel shook his head. He was seven and his wedding had been such a long time ago.

“Your husband has died and you are now in mourning.” He was seven and his eyes didn’t shed tears nor did his mouth drop into a frown. What was mourning to a seven year old?

He didn’t know what those words meant. His mother had bathed him and cut his hair. He could not wear colors anymore, only white because his husband had died. Dan could not remember what his husband had looked like.

“Mama, what was his name?”

“Do not worry about that now, child.” She told him. “You must never speak his name again.”

“But how will I know if I’ve said his name if I don’t know it?” Dan asked. His mother gave him a dirty look.

After his husband was cremated, Dan was told that he would live with the other unmarried Omegas in the Sanctuary. His mother and father brought him in the middle of the night and swiftly left the sleeping boy in the arms of another omega. When he woke, Dan sought out a familiar face in the house. All he could find were sullen, solemn faces and white robes of death.

“Where is my mama?” he screamed. “I want my mama!”

“You are one of us now. Your family is gone and no longer want you. We are your family now.”

“I want my mama,” he screamed continuously. They locked him in a room and told him he couldn’t eat until he settled down.

_Age Thirteen_

“You’re in heat,” Jocasta told him. “It’s going to feel like you’ve gone to hell. There are no alphas for you here.”

Dan’s head was swimming and the heat of summer overwhelmed him. He’d seen other omegas in heat, of course, but this was something he’d never imagined. He wanted someone to just touch him.

By day five, he was begging for death. Omegas do not handle alpha-less heats well. It became unbearable to never have true release. If his husband had survived the influenza epidemic when he was younger, Dan would have had an alpha to get him through this heat. Dan would then remain with him for the rest of their married life.

_Age Fifteen_

Mourners were not to be touched. They were not to be fed or clothed by others. Dan had grown accustomed to begging on the street. Mourners could not work and no one would give them anything to do. It was against the Holy Scriptures they all lived by so rigidly. Giving money to the Mourners was considered a good deed and this was the only way they could obtain sustenance.

Alphas touched them though. Never in public, always in private. When Dan was about fifteen, the house had run out of bread and other staples. The public ignored their pleas for help so the leader of the mourners made a decision.

A beta came to take him every night. They sailed across the lake as she sang loudly. Dan remained quiet, his true nature stifled by his circumstances. The beta helped him out of the small boat and lead him into a stately home with few lights and too many strange noises. The woman left him in front of door that he pushed open tentatively. An alpha beckoned him inside.

Dan was paid enough to feed the house for a year. After the first time, he cried for a week.

_Age Sixteen_

Another child came to join them. His name was Gabriel and his husband died the night the boy went into an early heat. His husband had celebrated with a few of the other alphas, became drunk and fell asleep on the train tracks.

The child followed Dan everywhere he went, whether it be down to the well to catch water or to bathe.

“Do you like children?” Gabriel asked one morning when Dan could feel his heat setting in and was more irritable than normal.

“I suppose.”

“That’s not a real answer.”

Dan grabbed the handles of the buckets he was carrying back to the house and they set off.

“You didn’t answer.”

“It doesn’t matter. I will never have children,” Dan growled back at the boy’s annoying questioning.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” a man said as Dan passed by. Dan looked back and found himself staring at the alpha.

“What do you think?” Dan asks politely, letting the buckets down on to the ground to give his hands a break.

The man with dark hair and blue eyes hidden by glasses approaches the two omegas swiftly. Gabriel cowered behind Dan’s leg, fearful of what this might mean. No one ever spoke to them. It wasn’t right.

“Beautiful omegas should share their beauty by producing children. It makes the world a more beautiful place.”

Dan scoffed. “What if those omegas have lost their alphas and are doomed to a life of childlessness and poverty?”

“They don’t have to be stuck in one place for the rest of their lives. You both have just as much rights as anyone else.”

Dan rolled his eyes and took up the water again. Gabriel clutched Dan’s shirt as they walked down the street toward the Sanctuary. Dan tried his hardest not to look back but when he did, he found the stranger smiling so, in a moment of frivolity, Dan smiled back.

_Age Seventeen_

The stranger sat in front of the Sanctuary with book and umbrella in hand.

“Why the umbrella?” Dan asked him one day.

The stranger shrugged. “I was prepared to wait the day for you. It might rain.”

Gabriel giggled without trying to stifle himself. Dan shot him a glare to be quiet.

“You do not even know my name,” Dan told him.

“I will if you tell me.”

“Dan.”

“Dan, I’m Phil.”

“What do you want from me?” Dan asked fretfully.

“Just your company.”

Dan shouldn’t trust an unmarried Alpha. He knew he shouldn’t. “Alright,” Dan smiled and nodded.

_Age Twenty_

Phil went away to University and came back more outspoken than ever.

“We’re getting married.”

Dan shook his head and backed away but Phil kept him close as they hid in a small collection of trees off the main road. “I can’t.”

“Do you want to?”

Dan shifted his gaze from Phil’s lips to his eyes. He nodded and said, “I do.”

“I love you and the new laws say that omegas can remarry. There’s nothing stopping us, Dan.”

“Except everybody we know.”

Dan still traveled across the water to lay with the Alpha. He couldn’t help but think if Phil ever knew, he’d never want him and then he’d have no one. Dan couldn’t take the chance so he told him, “They sell me so we can all eat. That is why my hair remains uncut and why they allow me out of the gate.”

Phil did nothing but bring Dan into him for a soul-crushing embrace. “I want you to meet my family. They want to know who has managed to steal my heart.”

Phil hired a boat to take him and Dan across the water his family’s home. When Dan saw the house they were approaching he asked, “Who is your father?”

“Alpha Charles Lester.”

Dan begged Phil to turn the boat around. “I can’t marry you,” he lamented. “Let me go home!”

***

Gabriel told Dan that Phil was still sitting outside the house everyday like he used to. “Tell him to go away.”

The boy returned with the message: “I know what he did. We’ll go far away. I still want to marry you. Nothing will change that.”

Dan looked out the window to see Phil deeply entrenched in a novel. It made him smile.

“Will you marry him, Dan?” Gabriel asked.

“I have to ask him something first.”

Dan wrote a note for Gabriel to deliver.

Phil was pulled out of his book when the child handed him a piece of paper. Gabriel then pointed to the window where Dan was standing. As Phil read the message, Dan waited. Phil finally looked up and nodded.

Dan gathered his meager belongings as quietly as he could. Outside, Phil picked up the omega and kissed him passionately, much to the chagrin of passersby.

“Are you ready?” Phil asked, smiling wide and looking at Dan with love in his eyes. Dan nod then turned to Gabriel. “Would you like to come with us?”

The child looked back at the Sanctuary then took Dan’s hand as they left that world behind.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr  
> [dannihowell](https://danni-howell.tumblr.com/)


End file.
